There are two new additions to the site worth a mention, short and sweet. One: we’ve added a user preference for whether “More from this creator” or “Related videos” defaults on watch pages. So if you find “related videos” irksome (isn’t losing the spotlight always a drag?), you can have that section default to more videos by YOU. Two: we’ve added programmable widgets to category pages to help us better fill those pages with the best videos. Think your video belongs front and center on a particular category page? Send your suggestions to editor@revver.com.

Up next: we’re working on some improvements to the upload process that will keep you better informed of video status as your videos are transcoded, reviewed, and put online. These changes aim to resolve the upload problems some users have experienced since our database migration.

Phase III of our three-step hardware migration/upgrade is complete. Sorry for the bumps (outages, delays etc.) along the way, but it should be smooth and speedy sailing from here. Thanks for your patience everyone, and please let us know if there are any lingering issues that need to be addressed.

Due to a software upgrade, media serving will be interrupted for approximately 30 minutes on Saturday, May 31 at 8 p.m. This means that all Revver videos will be temporarily unavailable during the upgrade. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause, and thanks for your patience.

Just a quick heads up to let you know that we’ll be undergoing a three-stage hardware upgrade that will begin in a couple weeks. Depending on your particular use of Revver, this will likely cause some type of outage in your services. During these stages, we’ll be physically moving our servers to a bigger and better datacenter while upgrading our networking infrastructure at the same time. We want you to know that we’re doing our best to minimize the impact of these outages, and hope that ample warning will give you a chance to message out to your own users if needed. Details are as follows:

1) The first outage will occur on June 7th, from 11 am to 6 pm PST. During this time, no videos will play on or off Revver.com, and Revver.com will be be unavailable. We are preparing a service outage message that will appear on the player when someone clicks on a video, so the viewer won’t be left with an endless spiral or a “video not available” message.

2) The second outage will occur on June 12th from 11 pm to 3 am PST. This will affect Revver.com and the Revver API. Anyone depending on the Revver API to get video metadata will be unable to do so at this time. Because of the API outage, Widgets and RSS feeds will also be down. Otherwise, videos posted off Revver.com will play normally.

3) The final outage will occur on June 17th, from 12 pm to 5 pm PST. During this time, Revver’s transcoding and development servers will be offline. Videos will continue to play on and off Revver.com. This outage will not be visible to most users, but transcoding will be down, so videos uploaded during this period will not be processed until the outage is over. We are prepared to work through the transcoding backlog quickly, and will let you know if there are any problems.

We appreciate your patience during these upgrades and look forward to being a better and stronger Revver when we’re finished!

If you have any questions about how this will affect you specifically, don’t hesitate to contact us at support at revver.com.

There will be an outage tonight during our scheduled maintenance window from 11pm-12am PST. We’re moving one or our events servers to a new machine to address the events processing delays from the last few days. A number of services will be down for part of the window including Revver.com, uploading, and QuickTime video serving. Thanks for your patience!

We’re doing some work on the site tonight, so there are a couple of maintenance windows to be aware of. Revver.com will be down for a short time between 8pm-9pm PST while we perform an update to the site. The second update is from 11pm-1am and will involve the transcoding system — all of transcoding will be down during this time, so videos uploaded around the window may take a little longer than usual to make it online. There will be an API outage for the first 30 minutes of the second window (11:00pm-11:30pm), so Revver.com, widgets, API sites etc. will be down. Media serving won’t be affected during either window, so your embedded videos are gravy.

Thanks for bearing with us during these updates. Tomorrow we’ll have a new transcoding system in place which will mean fewer errors and better video processing.

update: Forgot to mention that the site update occurring during the first window includes a reworking of the contact page that will facilitate messaging between contacts. We’re also adding some helpful icons to the top left of every page to keep you posted on new messages and new videos from contacts (more icons to come).

We’ll be performing a routine maintenance tonight between 11:00pm-11:30pm PST. Revver.com, the Revver API, and all associated services (including media serving i.e. embedded videos) will be unavailable for about ten minutes during that time. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience!

We’ll be performing a routine maintenance on our load balancers tonight between 11:00pm-11:30pm PST and both Revver.com and the Revver API will be unavailable for a few minutes during that time. Media serving (embeds, widgets etc.) will not be affected. Thanks for your patience!

We’re upgrading our upload server during tonight’s maintenance window (11:00pm-11:30pm PST), and uploading will be unavailable during that time. Thanks for your patience!

Over the next few days we will be introducing targeted third-party overlay ads to videos on the network. An overlay ad is a clickable ad that displays in the bottom 20% of the video window shortly after playback begins. The ads are semi-transparent, and viewers can minimize them at will (see above example).

We’re excited about this, as it means a wider variety of ads and increased earnings for participants, and we will be offering overlay ads to creators on an opt-in basis, along with pre-roll. It is important to note that overlay and pre-roll ad opportunities are now a bundled option — opting in means opting in to both kinds of ads, and opting out means opting out of both as well.

If you want your videos to receive overlay and pre-roll ads, please make sure to enable these ads by checking the appropriate box in your account preferences. If you don’t want overlay and pre-roll ads, you can disable them by unchecking the box. If you are unsure of how these ads will affect your videos, we recommend giving it a whirl — you can opt-in and opt-out at any time, as many times as you want.

Please note that enabling overlay and pre-roll ads doesn’t mean your content will necessarily receive both kinds of ads, as ad pairings depend on a variety of factors. After a brief testing period, we will be pushing overlay ads to as many creators as possible. If you have any questions or feedback, let us know.